Brian Osmond is still in shock. His eyes alternate from welling tears to a vacant stare as he recounts the story of how he lost everything he owned while crawling for his life.
"I'm lucky to be alive," he said.
While one person was killed when post-tropical storm Fiona hit Newfoundland's southwest coast on Saturday, many more narrowly escaped the same fate thanks to the help of their neighbours — or just sheer luck.
Osmond, best known as "Smokey" in his hometown of Port aux Basques, is one of them. He was cooking on Saturday morning when he looked out the window and saw water pooling up around his garage. He went to move his truck across the road but saw the water rising even more. After moving the truck to a nearby hill, the 62-year-old went back to his house.
That's when the storm surge hit.
"I went back in the door and a wave took me, and I went under," he said. "I thought I was gone."
Osmond said something was on top of him, pinning him down. He thinks it was likely his patio, also swept up by the wave. He was on his hands and knees, struggling to get his head above the surface."I was just crawling and crawling and trying to get up. I was trying to get my head above water because water was going down my throat."
The water started to drag him down into the cove, but Osmond somehow got control. He figures the whole ordeal lasted only a couple of minutes, but it was the scariest moment of his life. After he got his footing and ran to a neighbour's house, Osmond watched a second wave completely destroy his house. Read the full story here. A woman cuts her hair during a protest in New York City on Tuesday against the Islamic regime of Iran and the death of Mahsa Amini, who died after being arrested by Iran's morality police. Read more on this story here. Campus food banks in several provinces say demand is soaring. When Tilova Tul arrived at the University of Alberta from Bangladesh last year as a graduate student, she quickly turned to the campus food bank for help. Tul, who is studying public health, started using the school's food hamper program every few weeks, which provided her with staples such as eggs and rice. Her husband and three-year-old son have now joined her, meaning there are more mouths to feed. Combine that with inflation and higher living expenses, and money can be tight. Food hampers help fill the gap. "That makes the grocery costs a little lighter so everything accumulated, that kinda helps," Tul said, who is also a volunteer with the food bank. Erin O'Neil, executive director of the campus food bank at the University of Alberta, said several hundred new clients have signed on with the program since the start of the school year. Read more here.